A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens

by Farquhar, Michael

  Yussoupov then returned, and seeing Rasputin prostrate on the ground but still alive, started beating him with a club. At last the body lay still. The killers bound it up, cut a hole in the frozen Neva River, and dumped it in. When the corpse was found three days later, its lungs were full of water. Rasputin had actually drowned. As unseemly as his death was, his royal patron and her entire family would soon meet a far grislier demise.32

  PART VII

  When in Rome

  The Roman emperors of the first century were Europe’s first true monarchs—mega-kings ruling vast tracts of the continent in the years before the emergence of independent kingdoms. The roiling stream of royal scandal that runs through all of European history goes right back to them. These wicked icons elevated murder, lust, and all manner of vice to a highly corrupted art, leaving a lavish blueprint for all future royal misbehavior. Fortunately, ancient historians like Suetonius, who had a healthy taste for the tawdry, recorded it all for posterity.

  Nero takes in a little gladiatorial entertainment.

  1

  The Rage of Tiberius

  Sex and violence could never be tweezed apart when it came to Tiberius Caesar, during whose reign Jesus was crucified. His rule, which began in A.D. 14, was somewhat wise and temperate in its early years, but something snapped as the emperor grew older and left Rome to settle for the rest of his life on the island of Capri. It was there that he became infamous for his voracious sexual appetite and murderous rampages.

  If animal lust were to be further categorized, reptilian would probably best describe the slimy and dangerous tendencies exhibited by Tiberius. Never particularly handsome as a young man, he grew grotesque as he aged, covered with pus-filled eruptions that emitted a revolting stench as they festered. His personality came to mirror his appearance and aroma.

  Suetonius reports that Tiberius built pleasure palaces for himself on Capri, importing boys and girls from all over the vast empire to serve as his sexual playthings. He loved to watch them copulate in groups under his pornographic artwork, or in hidden groves he had carved out for the purpose. A group of boys, whom Tiberius called “minnows,” were made to follow him as he swam, and to dart between the legs of the imperial pedophile, nibbling on the “bait” he left dangling for them.

  Once, when he was sacrificing to the gods, the emperor took a fancy to one of the altar boys. After racing through the ceremony, he assaulted the boy and his brother behind the temple. When they protested, Tiberius did what any scorned suitor would do. He had their legs broken. Another young victim, this time a girl, was so revolted after being forced to bed with the dirty old emperor that she ran home, reportedly cursing “that filthy-mouthed, hairy, stinking old man,” and stabbed herself to death.

  Sex with Tiberius was probably worse than death at his command, but not by much. Along with his pleasure palaces, he built elaborate torture chambers, dungeons, and execution sites on Capri. Even the gods couldn’t help anyone invited to these hellish places. Though he lived in self-imposed exile, no one was safe from his frequent and random execution orders. Everyone from senators in Rome to children on Capri trembled at the very thought of incurring the almost whimsical wrath of the all powerful emperor.

  Bodies of his victims were left to rot on the Gemonian Steps in Rome, which descended from the Capitol to the Forum, or were dragged by hooks and tossed into the Tiber River. On Capri, Tiberius enjoyed sitting atop a cliff and watching as condemned souls, already hideously tortured, were hurled off. A contingent of soldiers was stationed below to whack them with oars and boat hooks just in case the fall failed to do the trick.

  To Tiberius, death was a relatively light punishment. What he really enjoyed was the slow process of getting there. When a man named Carnulus drank poison rather than endure what Tiberius had in store for him, the emperor was heard to exclaim, “Carnulus has got away!” Another prisoner under torture begged to be put out of his misery, but Tiberius wouldn’t hear of it. “No,” he sneered. “We are not yet friends again.” There was one torture the emperor found particularly amusing. After tricking an intended victim into drinking vast quantities of wine, Tiberius would suddenly order a cord tied so tightly around the man’s genitals that it would cut into his flesh and made urination virtually impossible.

  A good deal of this emperor’s monstrous cruelty was reserved for members of his own family. It is almost certain that he ordered the secret poisoning of his adopted son Germanicus, who had been a beloved military hero. The citizens were outraged by this murder and their suspicions that Tiberius was behind it were strengthened by the way he treated Germanicus’s widow, Agrippina the Elder, and her children.

  Like a sadistic cat, he toyed with Agrippina, leaving her utterly paranoid as to what he might do to her. At one meal he offered her an apple, which believing it was poisoned, she refused. Tiberius then used her lack of trust as an excuse to have her flogged and exiled. The beating was so bad she lost an eye. Agrippina then tried to starve herself as a means of ending her misery, but Tiberius had her force-fed. Though she eventually succeeded in killing herself, the emperor wasn’t quite through with her. He slandered Agrippina’s memory, going so far as forcing the Senate to declare her birthday an official day of ill omen. He then bragged about his own benevolence, saying he could have had her strangled and thrown down the Gemonian Steps. He even caused a bill to be passed that praised him for his clemency.

  Two of Tiberius’s grandsons fared no better than their mother. The emperor was miffed when prayers for their safety were included with his own during one New Year’s celebration. He turned on the boys with a vengeance, encouraging false reports against them and using their resulting indignation as evidence of their treachery. The two boys were declared public enemies and ordered starved to death. One committed suicide. The other, as Tacitus and Suetonius both report, grew so hungry that he tried to eat the stuffing out of his prison mattress. Both were then chopped into so many pieces that it was difficult to gather them all up for burial.

  A third grandson somehow survived the cruel reign of Tiberius to inherit his throne. It is widely believed that Gaius, or Caligula as he is better known today, hastened his inheritance by arranging the old emperor’s murder in A.D. 37. News of Tiberius’s death brought joyful relief among the Roman citizens who had grown disgusted by his relentless depravity. “To the Tiber with Tiberius!” they shouted. The unwary populace might not have been so quick to celebrate had they even an inkling as to just how bad the new emperor would be. Tiberius himself had a pretty good idea. “I am nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom,” he once said of his successor.

  2

  Oh, God !

  While Tiberius correctly saw a snake, the people believed Caligula to be just a teddy bear in a toga. He was, after all, the son of the noble and heroic Germanicus, the revered martyr and military master who had subdued Germany. They treated Caligula as a national treasure, remembering him fondly as a young lad when they gave him cute little names like “Star,” “Baby,” and “Pet.” Even the name Caligula was adorable, Latin for “Bootikins” or “Little Boots.” His father’s soldiers gave him that one when he was a little boy left in their company.

  The people were overjoyed at his ascension in A.D. 37, but “Bootikins” would soon show them just how wrong first impressions can be. He transcended Tiberius in depravity, making the dead emperor seem like a harmless island hermit by comparison. They both enjoyed large-scale torture and execution, but Caligula became a true connoisseur. His favorite method of killing was to have numerous small wounds inflicted on a victim until the sum became lethal. “Make him feel like he is dying,” the mad emperor said.

  A good torture session often provided mealtime entertainment for Caligula, who kept a headsman always on hand in case he felt the need for his services. At one meal, some fellow diners became a bit disconcerted when Caligula suddenly burst into fits of laughter. Politely inquiring as to whether they might share the joke, they almost choked on their grapes at the
menacing response. “What do you think?” the emperor sneered. “It occurred to me that I have only to give one nod and both your throats will be cut on the spot!”

  Caligula liked to have parents forced to watch the executions of their children. When a father asked to be excused on one occasion due to illness, the emperor generously provided a litter to pick him up so he wouldn’t miss out on all the fun. “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please,” he once offered as a gentle reminder of his power.

  Violent entertainment always gave Caligula a buzz and he proved himself to be a great patron of gladiatorial matches and wild beast shows. He organized many of them himself and sometimes even participated. When a gladiator once dropped to his knees to end a fight, Caligula raced onto the field and stabbed him to death. Then he proudly claimed the victory laurels for himself. On another occasion, a man about to be thrown to the wild beasts screamed his innocence of any crime. Caligula had the man brought before him as if to hear him out, but instead of listening to his case, he had the man’s tongue cut out and then tossed him to the beasts as planned.

  Conventional cruelty sometimes bored him at these events, and he delighted in presenting alternative matches—pitting old people against old animals, for example, or setting up matches between the handicapped. He was, however, frugal when it came to his entertainment. Finding butcher’s meat too expensive to feed to the wild animals, he decided chopped-up criminals would do just as well.

  All this is not to imply that Caligula wasn’t a religious man. Indeed he was. So much so that he declared himself a god. While other Roman emperors had to wait until they were dead to be deified, Caligula bypassed that technicality and declared his divinity while he was still alive. He had the heads knocked off the statues of the other gods and replaced with his own image. At his command, a temple was raised in his honor, featuring a life-size, golden statue of himself that he ordered dressed daily in the same clothes he happened to be wearing. Caligula’s temple became the place to worship in Rome, with rich sacrifices and fierce competition among citizens to serve as priests.

  With his delusions of divinity, the emperor was often found in dialogue with his fellow gods, inviting the moon goddess to join him in the sack, for example, or whispering secret communications to a statue of the mighty god Jupiter. Once he was overheard threatening him. “If you don’t raise me to heaven,” he warned, “I will cast you down to hell.” Having put Jupiter in his place, Caligula announced the god wanted them to share a home and ordered his palace connected with Jupiter’s temple at the Capitol so they could be closer.

  To his credit, Caligula wasn’t a jealous deity. He shared the glory with his sister, Drusilla, ordering her name be included with his whenever an oath was taken or a prayer was spoken. His generosity to his sister may have had something to do with the fact that he was sleeping with her. Having stolen Drusilla from her husband, he treated her as his own wife. When Caligula grew dangerously sick at one point, he willed her all his property and named her heir to the throne. Fate, alas, spared Caligula but took Drusilla instead. Crazed with grief—if it was possible for him to get much crazier—he ordered the empire into mourning. It became a capital offense to laugh, bathe, or even eat with one’s family during this period, and he came to swear by Drusilla’s divinity. For some reason, his other two sisters didn’t hold the same appeal. Sure he bedded them, but he let his friends do the same and then publicly denounced them as adulteresses.

  When he wasn’t ravaging his sisters, other men’s wives served just as well, including one on her wedding day. “Hands off my wife,” Caligula warned the groom sitting across from him at the reception feast. He then had the bride carried off to his palace and married her himself. Within a week he tired of her and they were divorced. Caligula had his eyes set on another woman, but that relationship didn’t last long, either. After they split, the emperor forbade her from ever sleeping with another man.

  It must have been difficult for any of Caligula’s lovers to feel completely comfortable in his arms. “And this beautiful throat will be cut whenever I please,” he would coo whenever he kissed the neck of his mistresses. Still, his love for a woman named Caesonia was almost touching. Though she was neither young nor beautiful, and something of a tramp, Caligula was smitten. So much so that he paraded her naked in front of his friends. Happy as he was, though, he refused to dignify Caesonia with the title of wife until she bore him a child. She obliged him with a baby girl.

  Despite the brief period of domestic harmony, the little family was doomed. The people who had once adored “Little Boots” had discovered what a bastard he could be. Fed up, they turned on him. Less than four years after being joyfully hailed as the new emperor, Caligula was assassinated in A.D. 41. Caesonia also was murdered, along with her baby daughter, whose brains were reportedly bashed out against a brick wall. No one was interested in seeing that family line propagated.

  3

  I Claudius, Aren’t I?

  If you believe Suetonius, Caligula’s uncle and successor, Claudius, was every bit as stupid as his nephew was nuts—and almost as cruel. An ugly, uncouth clod, he was called “a monster: A man whom Nature had not finished but had merely begun,” by his own mother. Antonia’s maternal pride was such that when she wanted to emphasize someone else’s stupidity she would exclaim, “He is a bigger fool even than my son Claudius!”

  Other family members held similar opinions. When his sister Livilla heard someone predict that Claudius would one day inherit the imperial throne, she dropped to her knees and prayed aloud that Rome would be spared such a horrible fate. He was such a buffoon that, even in the midst of the bloodbath of other family members, Caligula kept him alive just for laughs.

  Claudius, in fact, had a tough time commanding respect from anyone before he came to the throne. When he fell asleep after dinner, as was his tendency, the gathered guests would pelt him with dates and olive pits. He later tried to explain away his stupidity, saying it was merely an act that served him well during the reign of his vicious nephew. Few were convinced, however, including the author of a contemporary book called A Fool’s Rise to Power.

  Claudius certainly seemed to justify the book’s title when he heard himself proclaimed emperor at the age of fifty. A glorious occasion it was not. He was hiding behind a curtain at the time, cowering in fear, having just heard of the assassination of Caligula. When a guard saw his feet poking out and drew aside the curtain to see who it was, Claudius dropped to the floor and clung to the soldier’s knees pleading for mercy. He was far from reassured by the proclamation that he now ruled, whimpering that he would be destroyed by the same forces that had done in his nephew. It was only when he heard the crowd chanting for monarchy that he began to relax and eventually flex his muscles.

  After a brief honeymoon, with Claudius making a great show of benevolence and amiability, things started to get ugly. The new emperor was basically a simpleton with a bad attitude, and his vicious inner-child soon emerged with a vengeance. Like his predecessors, he loved presiding over tortures, executions, and fights to the death. Gladiatorial contests enjoyed the addition of some whimsical new rules introduced by the emperor. He decreed, for example, that any fighter who fell accidentally should have his throat slit—in full view, so Claudius could observe the death throes. At one scheduled mass execution, Claudius became violently annoyed when an executioner could not be found to kill the group of condemned that were tied up to stakes and ready to be dispatched. Determined not to miss an opportunity to satisfy his lust for blood, Claudius summoned an executioner from outside the region and, with nothing better to do, sat around all day waiting for his arrival.

  His cruelty was by no means diminished by his stupidity, however. After executing one of his wives, Messalina, for adultery, bigamy, and treason, he apparently forgot what he had done and asked where she was at dinner one night. Another time, he sent for some men to play dice with him. Irate when they failed to appear at his command, he fired off an ang
ry missive calling them lazy—completely oblivious to the fact that he had already ordered them executed.

  Despite his ruthlessness, or perhaps because of it, Claudius never sat comfortably on his throne. He was convinced that he would be killed and, as a result, showed himself to be a monumental coward as well as savagely paranoid. Anyone perceived as a threat he would have killed, including members of his own family. Claudius’s paranoia became an effective tool for the scores of people who wielded influence over him in getting rid of people they didn’t like.

  When his treacherous wife, Messalina, and his secretary, Narcissus, decided to remove one enemy, Appius Silanus, they settled on a plan that had worked for others before. They agreed that Narcissus would alert Claudius to horrible dreams he was having about the emperor’s murder by Appius. With that cue, Messalina would awaken from a fake sleep and pretend to be astonished, saying she had been having the very same dream. The couple had already arranged to have Appius summoned to the emperor, so that when he arrived they could say he was forcing himself in, just as their dreams had foretold. Not surprisingly, the ruse worked, and Appius was dragged away and killed.

  Claudius so feared for his life that he bravely tried to abdicate on several occasions. After one man was arrested carrying a knife Claudius believed was meant to kill him, he summoned the Senate in a panic. The emperor broke down in tears and protested loudly that he wasn’t safe anywhere. He then disappeared from the public eye for several days to nurse his fears. After hearing of another plot, this time to kill him and put Messalina’s lover on the throne, Claudius fled in terror to his guards’ camp while repeating over and over, “Am I still Emperor?”